Homelessness and Baltimore Riots

Homelessness is a growing problem in the South Bay, and I commend Random Lengths News for discussing this issue. Many homeless suffer from mental illness, including veterans struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Investments in proper treatment then training would tackle a number of issues connected with homelessness.

Homeless Tent (Rodrigo)

Aside from treating those individuals with mental health concerns, what else can be done to alleviate poverty?

Research has revealed that making it easier for people to get a job is better than providing stuff from the state, all paid for by John Q. Public. James Q. Wilson, professor of political science at UCLA, affirmed that individuals can avoid poverty by doing three things: 1. Finish high school 2. Wait until age 20 before getting married 3. Get married before having kids. How often are these values promoted today?

Now, let’s turn our focus to Baltimore, Maryland, where the latest race riots broke out in the wake of purported police brutality.

Matt Weurker’s inferences in his latest cartoon are commendable, including the failing public schools and the loss of major jobs and trade. It is not enough for the police to beat down criminals and thugs, in a public atmosphere which has exacerbated these problems.

However, Weurker’s cartoon and Allen’s editorials ignore the deeper causes of homelessness in general and Baltimore’s economic and moral malaise in particular.

Sixty years of liberal-progressive victimization, race-baiting, redistribution of wealth, and outright waste and fraud turned a beautiful Eastern seaboard city, the scene of American victory over the invading British depicted in the Star Spangled Banner, the home of freedom fighter Frederick Douglas, into a morass of broken homes, bad schools, and cronyism throughout.

Regardless of what the six police officers may or may not have done (keep in mind that half of the indicted officers are black, one of them female), the problems in Baltimore, Maryland had festered for decades, all under Big Government Democratic policies of expanded bureaucracies, rampant welfare abuse, Big Labor bullying, and anti-growth programs, all of which have diminished access to a quality education and rebuffed robust commercial activity. Labor unions and government bureaucrats (20% of Baltimore employees work for the government) have profited at the expense of everyone else.

Baltimore Harbor (Chuck Szmurlo)

 

What Baltimore needs is exactly what single mother Toya Graham gave her son: repeated slaps on the head, with stern rebukes to stop babying miscreants and start rewarding hard-working, law-abiding citizens.